Brent Staples’ Black Men and Public Space: The Ability to Alter Space

﻿Angel Johnson
Professor O’Toole
Journal #3
20 September 2012
Black Men and Public SpaceIn Brent Staples’s “Black Men and Public Space,” he describes his ability to alter space. Being a broad, tall African American, Staples is often feared by others and confused with danger. Staples says, “As a softy who is scarcely able to take a knife to a raw chicken - let alone hold one to a person’s throat - I was surprised, embarrassed, and dismayed all at once. Her flight made me feel like an accomplice in tyranny” (226). Staples is a friendly guy, and he struggles to understand why his appearance makes others fearful of him. Even though Staples was aware of his ability to alter space, he didn’t realize the negative effects it could have on him. Staples says, “The fearsomeness mistakenly attributed to me in public places often has a perilous flavor” (228). As an African American in the 1970’s, Staples forgets that his appearance can be mistaken for something terrible, for example a burglar. It is not uncommon for a black man to be confused as a criminal and Staples is aware of that. Staples has learned to be more cautious about his actions around others. He strives to make others feel unthreatened in his presence. Over time, Staples has learned to use his ability to alter space in a positive way for him and others around him.

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crime fled the scene. Tyrone was there when this all happened. The police arrived to the scene right away to question all the witnesses; they all accused Tyrone because he was the only black man in the area. Tyrone an innocent black man had experienced what “BlackMen and PublicSpace” deal with almost every day.
Brent Staple’s essay, “BlackMen and PublicSpace” discloses the racial profiling and ignorance he experiences out in publicspaces from others as a young black man into his older age. Staples’ shares with his readers some of his personal encounters when he was stereotyped by his physical appearance. Staples’ also illustrates his inner struggle of acceptance of not being feared no more. In today’s society many...

...﻿BlackMen and PublicSpaceBrentStaplesBrentStaples (b. 1951), the oldest of nine children, was born in Chester, Pennsylvania. His father was a truck driver who lost his job along with 40,000 other workers in the 1960s because of plant closings in the area. The family was reduced to poverty. Staples had never considered college until a college professor took an interest in him and encouraged him to apply to a program that recruited black students. He enrolled at Widener University (B.A. 1973), where he excelled and received a Danforth Fellowship for graduate study. He took a Ph.D. in behavioral psychology at the University of Chicago in 1977. From 1977 to 1981 he taught psychology at several colleges in Pennsylvania and Illinois, but a job as a report for the Chicago Sun-Times in 1982 and 1983 began his shift to journalism. He began writing for the New York Times in 1983 and has served on the editorial board of that newspaper, for which he writes opinion pieces on race, social problems, politics, and contemporary culture.
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Staples write, “It was in the echo of that terrified woman's footfalls that I first began to know the unwieldy inheritance I'd come into – the ability to alterpublicspace in ugly ways. It was clear that she thought herself the quarry of a mugger, a rapist, or worse. Suffering a bout of insomnia” (Staples 294). He said, that the women had feelings, she is afraid of him and he thinks she thought he is a murderer and dangerous, just because he was black. This is not fair and I ask how he was feeling in the event? He talked about black man but he meant that all black people have a huge problem in the black community.
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...uninflammatory distance between us. Not so. She cast back a worried glance. To her, the youngish black man – a broad six feet two inches with a bear and billowing hair, both hands shoved into the pockets of a bulky military jacket – seemed menacingly close. After a few more quick glimpses, she picked up her pace and was soon running in earnest. Within seconds, she disappeared into a cross street.
Passage from BlackMen and PublicSpace (1986) by BrentStaples.
BrentStaples is the writer and narrator of BlackMen and PublicSpace, an essay in which he tells the reader examples of his own experiences that occurred because of stereotype-based fear coming from mainly Caucasians towards him, an African-American male. In his essay’s opening paragraph Staples uses alliteration, determiners, unusual word choice and variation in sentence length to simultaneously confuse and tell the reader about his own experiences with race stereotypes.
The tone of the essay is instantly set in the first sentence by using the word ‘‘victim’’. It generates immediate confusion within the reader and raises the question of what the writer tries to tell us using this word, what the intentions of the narrator are with this ‘‘woman’’ and why she is a victim. These well-chosen first few words already...